Why is there so much separation between the professional audio and audiophile worlds?

a2d, You keep thinking that. What I find “ridiculous” (thanks, btw) is that someone who claims to be a “professional” in the field would think that. Not surprising. Explains a whole lot and why so many of today’s recordings sound overly processed and just plain bad. Go ahead and have the last word, I don’t enjoy our discussions.

Change = loss of fidelity.  Good try, ‘though.

You are misinterpreting what I wrote.  It is not that better gear will not OVERALL provide better sound.  Obviously, it will.  However, inferior gear will mask much of what is lost.  That is why many complain about the quality of many recordings.  Good gear exposes the warts; it will also sound fantastic with good recordings.....but there will still be losses.  

**** Well, if we are the 10th person in the line and so much of the music has been lost, then why we even bother with any hifi ****

I was afraid of responses like that. Seriously?

Obviously, it’s all relative. So, are you suggesting that fidelity is NOT lost? Go to a concert of a symphony orchestra or an acoustic set by a Jazz or Rock artist in a good hall and then listen to some similar music on your system and then get back to me. That was the point.

Remember the old “story” about putting ten (?) people in a straight line. Then, you whisper something in the ear of the first person and he whispers your comment into the ear of the second person who in turn whispers it to the third person and on and on..... By the time your comment reaches the tenth person it is a very different comment. This is analogous to what happens to music in the record/reproduce chain of events. Every step of the way to the home listener’s ear the sound loses some fidelity to the original event, no matter the quality of the gear (yes, even with “perfect” digital). As we all know there are many steps in this process.

**** What I’d like to know is: Why is pro gear better at putting sound onto media than home gear is at taking it off? ****

Is it? I’m not so sure. The way I see it, when “putting sound unto media” with pro gear, even if the pro gear happens to not be of quite the same high quality as the best audiophile gear, the sound is still a lot closer in fidelity to the original live event by virtue of the fact that it has endured far fewer “steps” of the total record/reproduce process. By the time the music is reproduced by the home gear (the tenth person) it has lost that much more fidelity. The better the home gear, the better it highlights just how much has been lost.